By now, we’ve come to expect that Confederate battle flags are scarce in many other parts of the country, including the former Confederacy. No surprise then, that we saw none during a recent trip to Chicago and Northern Illinois. And yet, they are not hard to spot in the Pacific Northwest, and the Washington Post … Continue reading Chi-town: Not a Rebel Town
We’ve been keeping a close eye out for Confederate flags for the past year, but not until recently did we travel into actual Confederate territory. If we wanted to run up the numbers of battle flag sightings, we should have stayed home. In five days of travel between San Antonio and Austin (linked by I-35) … Continue reading Deep in the heart of Texas… where the Confederate Flag doesn’t wave
If nothing else, this project has been and interesting education in controversial Southern practices. For instance, we had no idea there was a "Confederate Memorial Day" but there is. And it's today. Still celebrated/observed/recognized in Alabama and Mississippi, the holiday closes state offices and invites a remarkably predictable Twitter war. On one side, you have … Continue reading It’s Confederate Memorial Day. Dust off the same old arguments.
The first thing we should say about Amy Chua’s new book “Political Tribes,” is that she deserves great credit for highlighting the importance of group identity to modern politics. Nothing else can explain our current social dynamic, which is driven to a greater and greater degree by social identity, not policy issues. The second thing … Continue reading Political Tribes: A book review
Spotted a Confederate flag on a pickup within two hours of arriving in Boise, Idaho, this month. Although a long way from the South, it is a population center with a diversity of views and transplanted southerners. And, frankly, just a few weeks ago we spotted a similar flag on a similar pickup in Olympia, … Continue reading Still a Republican Paradise, But Newly Confederate: Idaho
"Scallywag" specifically refers to a white person who sided with the Republican Party and freed slaves after the Civil War.
More than sixty thousand books have been published on the Civil War.
Gary Younge’s report in the Guardian is remarkably incisive, offering a view of American racial politics and modern economics at a remove from being American. A British black man, Younge sets out to reverse the common trope of white journalists reporting on black America. Whiteness is all some Americans feel they have left, he says, … Continue reading A black British reporter explores white, working class America
Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect just summed up what we've been going on and on about as neatly as has been done yet. Unfortunately, he followed up with what very well may be stirring analysis, if you are a professional economist. First, here's the brilliantly condensed version of the social identity politics of the … Continue reading Somebody finally gets Bannon’s Strategy (promptly buries it under economic theory)
If you haven’t you should spend some time reading up on the experiment of Theo E.J. Wilson, a poet and activist from Denver. After being trolled by white supremacists on his YouTube channel, Wilson adopted an alt-right online persona to try and learn where the hate was coming from. (His name was John Carter, a … Continue reading On Southern Honor and Alt-Right Aggrievement
Confederate Identity Project 